In recent years, digital television broadcasting has started to enable watching a high resolution video image with an audio sound by a television receiver. Almost simultaneously, network-ready television receivers have been developed. Accompanying this, the functions of television receivers, further, devices for recording broadcast programs on a DVD, BD, or HDD and reproducing devices, which are called a set top box (STB), have been increasing. Yet further, One Seg broadcast receivers have been introduced to mobile phones to continuously promote increase in functions. As a result, operations and methods for various settings for these AV devices have become complicated, and inquiries to customer response centers arranged by manufactures and the like have increased.
In general, an operator, who has received an inquiry from a user, first asks the user to operate with a remote controller in order to recognize the state of the AV device of the user and the cause of a matter, and then tries to solve the problem by again asking the user to operating with the remote controller.
However, as has been described above, a method for operation has become complicated, a user often fails to operate as instructed by an operator, resulting in a problem that the user has an uncomfortable feeling or the trouble with the user cannot be solved instantly. In this situation, a method has been presented in which, using a device connected to a communication network, such as the Internet, the operator tries to solve the trouble through direct or indirect operation of the electric device of the user via the communication network from a terminal (refer to Patent Document 1).
However, this method possibly causes a conflict between remote operation and direct operation. When remote operation by an operator via a network and direct operation by a user are almost simultaneously performed, it is difficult to predict how the state of a device will be and to take measures. Upon occurrence of a conflict, a user who is consulting for solution of a trouble further becomes puzzled, which makes things even worse. To avoid this, a technology has been presented where, by preparing a dedicated gateway device in addition, even in a case of direct operation, an instruction is transferred to a target device once through the gateway, and then the target device is controlled (refer to Patent Document 2).
[Patent Document 1] Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2002-92206
[Patent Document 2] Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2002-44765